(RNN) – You can carve your initials in trees, and it’s OK. Chisel them into a brick, leave your name and even handprints in wet cement, and chances are, nobody will mind.
But don’t burn your initials into people’s livers if you are a transplant surgeon.
British surgeon Dr. Simon Bramhall, 53, found that out the hard way and wound up pleading guilty to assault by beating after he used an electric argon beam that is usually used to seal blood vessels to write “SB” onto two patients’ livers during a transplant operation in 2013, according to AP.
He seared the initials into the livers of a man and a woman and was discovered when the woman’s liver didn’t heal properly. Another doctor discovered his prank and turned him in.
He resigned, was reinstated and resigned again in 2014 from Queen Elizabeth Hospital, where he had served for 12 years.
The prosecutor, Tony Badenoch, told the Guardian that Bramhall’s guilty plea was an admission that what he did “was not just ethically wrong but criminally wrong.”
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